Israel has spent three years winning on the battlefield. Since Oct. 7, 2023, it has struck its enemies in seven arenas and restored its standing as the regional power. It has not yet won where wars are finally decided: in the minds of the enemy.
For a generation, Israeli and American policy rested on the opposite assumption: that concessions and economic relief would moderate the other side.
That is the argument of Meir Ben-Shabbat, who headed Israel’s National Security Council from 2017 to 2021, in a new paper, “Shattering the Palestinians’ Hope of Defeating Israel,” released on Oct. 19. Before that, he served some three decades in the Shin Bet, Israel’s counterintelligence service, including as head of the district responsible for Gaza, and he was one of the architects of the Abraham Accords. His conclusion is blunt: achieving Israel’s war aims is necessary but not sufficient. What is missing is the cognitive defeat of the Palestinian national movement, a lasting change in its belief that Israel can be beaten. “Not despair but hope,” he writes, “is what feeds terror and violence.”
For a generation, Israeli and American policy rested on the opposite assumption: that concessions and economic relief would moderate the other side. The Oslo Accords and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, Ben-Shabbat argues, taught the Palestinians that pressure extracts concessions. As long as they believe Israel can be defeated, every political process leads back to what he calls an “Oslo 2.”
The Palestinians’ own polling shows how far there is to go. Half told the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in May 2025 that Hamas’s decision to attack on Oct. 7 was correct, including 59% in the West Bank. In August, 72% said Hamas should not disarm before a full Israeli withdrawal. Support for Hamas has fallen. The belief that Israel can be defeated has not.
Nor has the Palestinian Authority, which some propose to install in Gaza, given anyone reason to think it has changed. It paid terrorists and their families $156 million in 2025, by Israel’s figure. The 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip capped its police at 30,000. Its security services now number an estimated 70,000. On Sept. 16, the State Department told Congress that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the PA had “once again” failed to meet their commitments.
Do not press for elections that would hand an unchanged PA, and possibly Hamas, a mandate. Document every PA violation and demand its correction.
That makes this Washington’s decision as much as Jerusalem’s. The United States drafted Security Council Resolution 2803 and leads the Board of Peace that will shape the force and the committee that run Gaza. The resolution holds out a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” once the PA reforms. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has meanwhile set Palestinian elections for Sept. 11, 2027, and Hamas says it will run within “the largest and broadest possible national coalition.” Americans who remember what the 2006 Palestinian vote produced should not offer an unreformed PA the prize before it has passed the test.
Ben-Shabbat’s policy lines offer an alternative: Disarm Hamas, demilitarize Gaza completely, and keep security control in Israeli hands. Condition reconstruction on disarmament. Keep Turkey and Qatar out of any stabilization force. Do not press for elections that would hand an unchanged PA, and possibly Hamas, a mandate. Document every PA violation and demand its correction.
The government that emerges from Israel’s Tuesday election will inherit these choices, and with them the familiar pressure to trade them for a quiet that does not last. Washington should help it end the Palestinian hope of outlasting Israel, not renew it.
